The Elementalists Read online

  She admired the crooked line of the roof while she waited for Angela to get in and unlock the door, but failed to notice the Grand Wagoneer that was parked in the adjacent space until Kirin spoke behind her.

  “Hey, Cow Thief, could I give you a ride home?” he asked from the open window at her back.

  “Oh!” she jumped, but tried to play it off. “Hey, where were you today?”

  “It’s kind of a long story,” he said, motioning to the passenger seat. “Get in.”

  Chloe looked across the dented green hood, where the antenna was held on by tin foil and electric tape. Angela nodded. “Chloe would be happy for the ride,” she announced without room for dissent. “See you tomorrow, Chloe,” she added.

  Chloe shot Angela a wide-eyed look before spinning back around with a smile. She rounded the Jeep as both cars revved to sputtering and roaring life respectively. She hopped in and slammed the heavy door behind her before casting a sideways glance at her unexpected chauffer. “Please don’t tell me that you’re grounded again?”

  Kirin chuckled. “No, not this time; my dad took me to D.C. this morning to get an expedited travel visa to China… I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  Leaving? Again! I give up. “Really? That’s amazing!” Chloe forced a grin.

  “Yeah,” he added with a sigh as they pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the hills. “We were trying to work out a way for my uncle to bring my grandmother over, but my dad got some grant to go there for that cauldron paper he’s writing. We’re flying to Hong Kong to see the cauldron and then making our way to Shanghai to meet up with my uncle and grandmother. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad so excited in my life,” he added with a roll of his eyes.

  “That’s great news, Kirin, and a fantastic opportunity,” Chloe admitted as she wondered if she’d ever make it off of the East Coast. “I wish I could go to China.”

  “You could go in my place. I’m sure my dad would love it,” said Kirin with a hint of anger behind his smirk. “I’d kill for some time to myself, without Dad watching my every move like a damned hawk. I feel like I’ve been in prison since school started, and this seems like it’s just going to be an inmate field trip with the warden.”

  “How long?” asked Chloe.

  “A little over a week,” he answered. “My dad’s already gotten the teachers to give him all the assignments, and he’s worked out a deal where I won’t be counted absent if I e-mail them in every day.” He winked. “There’s a pop quiz in American Civ next Wednesday.”

  He turned away from the main road and started to head upslope as the engine switched gears with a subtle lurch. “I wanted to see you before I go.”

  Then why have you been avoiding me for the last two weeks? The silence stretched on between them.

  “Not sure if you’ve seen it yet, but the same company that gave my dad the grant has kind of moved in on your pond.” There was genuine sadness in his voice.

  “Yeah, I know. Stan and I kind of got busted trespassing there the night of the dance,” she admitted. “I was trying to follow your advice and get back there, but it didn’t really work out so well.”

  Kirin tensed noticeably beside her. “So you and Stan are hanging out a lot?”

  “We’re just friends,” she blurted a little too quickly. “He’s actually really cool and hilariously sarcastic once you get to know him,” she added, only realizing after she’d spoken that she had echoed Ezra’s defense of Kendra earlier that day almost verbatim.

  “And what about Ezra?” Kirin asked, as if reading her mind.

  “He’s a friend, too, though I’m not sure I’d even call him that since he started dating Kendra.” She glanced to Kirin before letting her gaze drift nonchalantly out the window. “Why?”

  Kirin shrugged. “Just wondering… First you’re the Lightning Girl, then a track star, then the Homecoming Queen, and now on top of it all, you’ve been outed as the Cow Thief,” he said with a chuckle. “I felt like I had to get a few minutes in with you before I leave, or by the time I get back from China, you’ll be too famous to remember who I am.”

  “That’s true,” said Chloe. “I suppose I could give you an autograph now—it’ll probably be worth some real money by the time you graduate.”

  “Rather than an autograph, I was actually wondering if you were free tonight to hang out?” Kirin asked. “I thought maybe we could go to the Halloween parade if you didn’t already have plans.”

  Oh! Chloe choked on her own spit. She went from thrilled to terrified to confused in rapid-fire succession. She had, in a sense, been waiting for this moment for her entire life, though a public outing with much of her school in attendance was far from the venue she’d had in mind for her first official self-sanctioned date. And she didn’t know what to do about her plans with Stan…

  “No, I don’t have any plans,” she lied. “But I’m not so sure the Halloween parade is the least conspicuous place for the Cow Thief to go.”

  Kirin laughed. “That’s why you wear a costume; it’s the one day you get to be inconspicuous and conspicuous at the same time.”

  Chloe put her hand out the window and let it cut through the cool air the way she’d used to do as a kid. She remembered the look of her father’s profile from the backseat and the smell of the cigarettes he always had hanging out the window.

  She caught the descending deep orange glow of the sun in the rearview mirror as it dipped below the tree-lined horizon, and for a moment, the forest looked like it was ablaze in the little picture in the mirror. It was going to be a perfect autumn night.

  “I’m warning you, it can get pretty crowded at the parade.” She could already feel the terror of such a public outing diminish with Kirin’s smile.

  “Good, I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  Chapter 19

  Masked Reveals

  And so by 8:30 that night, rather than doing her part to avert the “end of the world” with the one person in her life who had fully embraced her lunacy, Chloe found herself at Kirin’s side in the thick of the town’s most crowded celebration.

  Chloe was again thrust into the role of tour guide as she took Kirin by the hand and led him into the fray. Beneath the cover of a black ski mask, she felt strangely empowered as they slipped down Main Street. A huge crowd had turned out for the Halloween parade. All the local schools had elaborate floats and marching bands, and every year the numerous UVA fraternities and collegiate groups competed for the most outlandish display to roll through town.

  Every year, Mayor Marty O’Neil came out to wave to the masses along the parade route, sitting in the back of a white Cadillac convertible beside his pill- and Botox-filled wife and his increasingly unfortunate looking daughter. Chloe caught a glimpse of young Meghan O’Neil, sitting sullenly in the backseat with her hands locked at her sides as if in stubborn protest of the expectation for her to wave. She’d picked up a case of bad acne that no amount of cover-up could conceal. As always, Chloe felt bad for her.

  But the normal cascade of doubt and anxiety that typically squelched Chloe’s every happy moment couldn’t take hold as she turned back to see Kirin’s smirk through the mouth hole in the foam and cardboard shark’s head mask he was wearing. He’d made it that afternoon with supplies he’d scrounged from his garage, complete with a swiveling jaw attached by a couple of brass fasteners and an oversized dorsal fin that regularly clipped passersby.

  It was brilliant, artful, and hilarious, and it made Chloe like Kirin all the more. Her unrelenting smile was visible only in her eyes as she gave his fingers an extra squeeze and led him into an even thicker swarm of masked revelers. She pulled him past a cluster of drunken zombie frat boys and turned her back on a coven of cackling vampiresses as they went by. Beneath the ski mask she was dressed in a stereotypical black-and-white striped robber’s shirt over black jeans and black Chucks. In her other hand she carried a burlap sack with the cardboard cutout of a big, juicy steak taped on.

  Everyone under the age
of thirty from the surrounding twenty-mile radius was packed within the two-block perimeter that surrounded West Main Street. Most of them had decided to embrace this opportunity to put on absurd outfits and behave poorly in public. Chloe was blind and deaf to them all, free at last with her anonymity returned. Her whole focus locked on the beautiful boy who was inexplicably ready to follow her every move. This is awesome!

  Chloe felt as if she and Kirin were somehow jointly shielded from the jostle and cacophony of the surrounding horde. She felt invisible and invincible as she pulled him to a halt beside a cluster of drama kids she recognized from school. She took a moment to catch her breath and pretended to be interested in the parade as Kirin adjusted his shark helmet beside her.

  “Ugh, Check out that O’Neil girl,” said a hyper-skinny boy who was dressed like a hipster Sherlock Holmes and spoke with overwrought disgust.

  “She looks like Shrek,” snickered a pig-nosed, self-styled stage queen, whose costume consisted of little more than bangs and bosoms.

  Chloe and Kirin exchanged a quick glance; she decided it was time to keep moving in the Ezra Richardson School of Crowd Negotiation. Without asking, she weaved her fingers back into Kirin’s willing grip, lowered her shoulder, and charged. She clipped Sherlock in the kidney as she passed, and Kirin followed up with an accidental fin swipe that swatted him across the bridge of his nose and knocked his prop pipe to the sidewalk.

  “Watch it, dick,” Sherlock hissed a moment later, just loud enough to make sure that his friends heard him and the offending party did not.

  Chloe slid through the crowd like a serpent lacing through the grass. Kirin never missed a step behind her, sticking just at arm’s reach without fail or question as their joint movement began to feel like a choreographed waltz. They traveled away from the sidewalk and through the town square, where the collegiate crowd thinned and the younger locals held dominance around the fountain. Chloe spotted Brian and some others moving away quickly as a film of suds began to collect on the water’s surface. She felt a pang of guilt as she looked for Stan among them, but the fleeing culprits were lost in the chaos.

  Earlier that evening, she’d floundered and waffled on the phone with Stan, making up some unnecessary story about her mom not letting her go out rather than telling the truth about Kirin… She wasn’t sure if she felt more guilty because she’d cancelled plans after having gone so long without having any friends to plan with, or if maybe she felt like she was betraying her universally ordained obligation to pursue the dragon above all else.

  “Operation Bovine Justice,” as Stan had started to call it, had been amicably postponed until Saturday. What’s wrong with wanting to take a shot at one night of enjoyment before the world ends? Though the Daedalus Group was unlikely to take off any days for high school or Halloween…

  Chloe’s drifting thoughts returned to the present as other kids began to whoop and cheer around the fountain. The soapy froth gathered and spread as the water jets churned the detergent spike that Brian had left behind. After only a couple minutes more, the rise of bubbles threatened to spill over the sides.

  Chloe spotted Liz and Paul kissing sloppily at the rim of the fountain, oblivious to it all. Liz was dressed in a green leotard that left little to the imagination and left Chloe feeling a little inadequate. Around her neckline Liz had stitched bright yellow daffodil petals, rimmed with armature wire, which completed her remarkably convincing costume and overall demeanor as a “beautiful flower.” Chloe kept her eyes straight ahead as she led Kirin past with a quick step.

  “Some of the kids from school soap the fountain a few times a year during these sorts of events,” Chloe said over her shoulder. “Supposedly it costs the city more than a thousand dollars to clean it every time.”

  With Liz and Paul behind them, Kirin steered Chloe toward the fountain’s edge. He grazed his hand over the water and came away with a thick tuft of soapy foam in his palm… “That’s kind of a dumbass thing to do,” he said.

  “I completely agree with you!” Chloe blurted. “It’s terrible for the environment and a total waste of water and money. It’s like no one has a conscience or gives a crap about the world anymore. Before long, all of our arrogance and neglect will be the end of us,” Chloe winced beneath the mask. Wow, that was uplifting! Maybe less talk, genius?

  Kirin’s eyes were still locked on the spectacle of bubbles beside them. Despite the news of his grandmother’s safety and the goofy teeth that framed his face, he still carried the burden of sadness within his gaze. Perhaps it was his sadness that Chloe was so strongly attracted to.

  “You could be right,” he finally answered. “Have you been watching the news? My dad watches a lot of news at night, and so recently, so do I… Things are getting crazy.”

  Chloe wasn’t sure if he was referring to the nature of the news itself or what was being reported. She looked down at his soapy hand and thought about reaching out to grab it again. Against the backdrop of the punch-drunk crowd, she couldn’t quell the niggling itch to second-guess her every move without the security of his touch.

  “Wasn’t Mayan Armageddon supposed to happen a few years ago?” He gave an unconvincing smile. “December 21st, 2012—sometimes I wonder if maybe they just miscalculated by a handful of years.”

  Chloe chuckled nervously. “December 21st is my birthday.”

  Kirin turned on her with big eyes, and his open warmth returned. “That’s awesome! How old are you?”

  Chloe looked away and considered not answering the question. He was still waiting for a response… “Fifteen,” she mumbled.

  His eyes went wider. “Really? You’re still a baby.”

  There it is! I suppose I could probably drown myself in these bubbles.

  Instead he grabbed her hand again without asking and gave it a playful squeeze. “So where to, baby?” he asked without judgment or expectation.

  Chloe thought she might explode with joy. She shrugged with a big, hidden grin. “I don’t know, I was thinking we could get milkshakes,” she suggested.

  “Yes,” answered Kirin with a comical nod of his helmet. “I could go for a black and white.”

  Without a moment more of hesitation, she led him away from the fountain and through a section of the square rimmed by hedges. Kid-packed benches were scattered throughout, each seat offering its own fleeting story as they passed. The first held a trio of nerdy private school kids passing around a couple cigarettes in a duel to look cool. All sides seemed to be failing. “It’s not too harsh,” one of them said as he exhaled the smoke out of his nose in an attempt to impress.

  At the next, an obscenely drunk girl was draped precariously across the bench with her legs in the air and a sloppy cackle spilling out of her upside-down head. Her friend was beside her, wrestling with her arm in an uproarious attempt to keep them both from spilling onto the slate.

  Chloe and Kirin kept moving toward a set of stairs at the other end of the square that would take them down a less traveled street to Positive Pete’s. Chloe stopped short of the last bench as she spied Kendra and Ezra sitting just a few strides away.

  Ezra was wearing a long, blonde, scraggily wig that hung across his face. He had tinfoil and spike-covered football shoulder pads over his bare chest and pants that looked to be made of mock animal hide and fur. Chloe wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be a professional wrestler or some sort of black Viking, but she couldn’t help but notice his body beneath all the silliness. She also did not fail to register the fact that his arms were locked at his sides and his scowl was pointed at his feet.

  Beside him, Kendra was dressed like she’d stepped from a background role in a hell-themed porn movie: she was covered in red skintight Lycra with little devil horns and a plastic pitchfork. She also looked to be close to tears as she struggled to claim Ezra’s attention.

  Emboldened by the ski mask, Chloe slowed her step and drifted closer to the unaware couple. She released Kirin’s grip with a wink and pretended to tie her shoes ag
ainst the stone basin of a nearby topiary. Kirin lingered with his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  “Do you plan on ignoring me all night?” Kendra asked.

  Ezra didn’t turn or respond.

  “Hey, my dad’s about to disown me for dating a black guy, the least you can do is make eye contact,” she joked with a desperate little tug on his arm.

  He glared at his fur-coated boots.

  “Please stop being mad at me,” she said. “I’m sorry I was mean to her; I’m kind of a bitch sometimes—I can’t help myself!”

  “I don’t really buy that,” he mumbled.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “My shrink says I have a borderline personality disorder or something. It’s not my fault; it’s just chemicals and stuff.”

  Ezra turned on her with hurt eyes, framed by the stringy blonde strands of the stupid wig. “Why her?” he challenged.

  “I don’t know, something about her just bothers me… I had a dream about her the other night where she grabs my arm and I burst into flames! It was totally freaky! She’s like a psychotic child!” She thinned her eyes. “And I might ask you the same question—why her?”

  “You don’t even know her,” he answered bitterly. “She’s cool…and she’s real.”

  “Well, if you’re so in love with her, then why don’t you date her instead?” Kendra snapped as she started to get up. Her red-rimmed eyes drifted over to where Chloe was taking too long to tie her shoe.

  Ezra grabbed Kendra’s wrist—somehow both fast and gentle at once—and eased her back down to the bench. “It’s not like that. She’s my friend. She keeps me grounded, and because of you, she won’t talk to me.”